Let's assume that the stick has a length of 130 cm. Of this, ~25 cm is above the snow level, which means that under the snow is ~105 cm. The stick stands at an angle of ~60° to the horizon. We lower the vertical from the top point of its part immersed in the snow to the level of the horizontal emanating from the bottom point and get a right triangle with
legs - a, b, angles - A, B, C and hypotenuse - c
The hypotenuse is a ski pole. Cathetus b, although without any calculations it is equal half a ski pole, we don’t need it. Cathetus a which shows the depth of the snow into which the stick is stuck = [ b]c × sin A i.e. 105 cm × 0.86 = 90.3 cm.
It is not a fact that the lower end of the stick rests on the ground. In the background of the same photo you can see another stick standing vertically. Using it you can approximately estimate the depth of the snow without remembering your home school.
Kyle, I'm not a fan of exploring donut holes. Whether Brusnitsyn was wrong or not is not very important. By default, it is clear that the level of snow adjacent to the tent from the west, in the photo of preparing the site for it, is at least a foot higher than what is visible in the photo of its discovery. This is enough to make one wonder: where did this foot go?
For those reading this entire long discussion thread, the above perfectly illustrates what I've been saying:
1. It doesn't refer to things I've said and appears not to have read them at all.
2. It includes many English words/phrases that likely came out of a machine translator and were NOT what the writer intended, but of course I have no way of knowing, so I am NOT going to assume the worst about the writer, whereas the more typical responder would insult those terms, or worse, assume that the writer did intend those exact terms, without stopping to think, "Why would he have said things that make no sense in the context of this discussion?"
3. It adds new points that my reply should not ignore but that are not easy to work into a discussion that includes handling the above issues.
4. It puts a foreign-language paragraph at the end (but thank goodness it does not quote me as having typed that part like prior replies inexplicably have).
5. It puts me in an awkward position of needing to politely ask the replier whether he already read my more recent items that he seems not to have read, and whether the oddities in his reply were intentional.
So here we go with an attempt to reply:
Partorg:
Your mathematical approach to calculating snow depth is almost exactly like the process that I already posted. Are you responding to that, or just coincidentally doing the same thing? Your write-up, alas, has enough non-standard terms that I cannot tell what your conclusion is or what, if any, errors you made. For example, in your use of "60 degrees" are you saying that the angle of the ski pole that I put a blue line on in my math write-up is 60 degrees up "from level"? To clarify, 90 degrees would be standing straight up vertically, 60 degrees would be much closer to vertical than lying flat (zero degrees), and 30 degrees would be much closer to lying flat than standing straight up. Remember that we are not discussing angles from the inclined ground there on the sloping mountain but are discussing the "angle from level". Also note that the pole in the photo is pointing back AWAY from the photographer, not to his right, so it is at a much smaller angle from level than one might assume. Further, note all the chunks of snow there preventing one from getting a good understanding of level. If you are seriously saying that you think that the pole is 60 degrees from level, then we are so far from agreeing that there is no point in any discussion at all. No mathematical analysis can begin without at least a general agreement of what the most basic of facts are that will be used in the calculations.
If we do have a basic agreement of facts, then wouldn't a more efficient approach be to discuss my math analysis instead of starting over? Further, mine is one that other readers and researchers can follow easily without being "put off" by math terms. The goal should not be simply to convince each other but instead to make it clear to the largest number of people possible. Incidentally, having now yet again reread my analysis, I see I should have clarified that column three in the chart is not "to the other end" but "to the level that the other end reaches", and that the "ground" I mentioned is the level walking snow the victims put the tent on, not the physical (sloped) ground underneath the snow. Note that many non-English natives use the word "floor" instead of "ground" when we natives use "floor" more often to mean an inside area that humans build and "ground" to mean everything else (e.g., a sidewalk, a road, a grassy lawn, a dirt yard, and a mountainside are all "ground" and not "floor").
In discussing depth of snow amidst dozens of piles of snow that have nothing to do with depth, how are you including that in the term "depth"?
Have you considered that the ski pole is the broken one from the back end of the tent and thus that we cannot tell anything about how far into the snow its other end is? Why do you suppose the searchers left the dangerous end of this pole (and others) in the air instead of jabbing that end into the snow the way it was designed for?
Your reply included several terms that I don't understand in the context of the discussion. Because I cannot tell whether they are translation errors (or even whether you are using a translation process at all), I do not know how to proceed. Do you want me to list them so you can determine where I am getting astray? You have not responded to my private message from a while ago, so while I would prefer to sort out the issue of translation problems that way, I cannot tell whether you instead prefer to have such side issues aired publicly.
> is at least a foot higher than what is visible in the photo of its discovery. This is enough to make one wonder: where did this foot [of snow] go?
Indeed! And discovering the answer to that was one of the biggest aha moments I have had during the entire month of researching this tragedy. But so far there is little progress with getting reasoned interactions about even small details, so I am far from willing to begin discussions about major issues like that.
Topic: help translate tent and snow paragraph (Read 7012 times)
